


Call Signs

by RockSunner



Category: Frequency (TV 2016)
Genre: Butterfly Effect, Gen, Temporal Paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 09:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9228218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockSunner/pseuds/RockSunner
Summary: What if Raimy and Frank weren't the only ones using the ham radio? Spoilers up to "The Edison Effect." All characters belong to Jeremy Carver and the CW, not me.





	1. Chapter 1

October 21, 2016, Detective Raimy Sullivan looked out of the kitchen window and into the garage, where her boyfriend Daniel had set up her father's old ham radio. It had somehow come on by itself after the thunderstorm that night. (The glow of the tubes was easy to spot because the set had lost its cover years ago, when her friend Gordo had accidentally dropped it. Gordo had helped her move it to the corner of the garage when she didn't want to look at it any more. It was a reminder of her father, a crooked cop who died in a drug deal gone bad.)

* * *

On October 21, 1996, Detective Frank Sullivan was listening to the World Series on the radio, smoking a cigar, and using his ham radio in his garage. It was a bit dangerous to be visiting home like this, when he was supposed to be in a deep undercover narcotics operation, but he needed a break from the stress. His wife, Julie, and his just-turned-eight daughter, Raimy were asleep, and not likely to catch him here,

"CQ, CQ, this is WQ2YV," he repeated.

"Hello?" said a woman's voice.

"Hey," said Frank. "Where are you from?"

"Queens, New York."

"Get out! Bayside, born and bred, right here."

Frank paused for an instant. Maybe this woman was a baseball fan who would root with him for the Yankees. "Maddux is ridiculous tonight."

"As in Greg Maddux, Atlanta Braves Greg Maddux?"

"As in game two, World Series. C'mon Queens, you're breaking my heart here."

"No, I get it. 1996."

"There you go," said Frank. "Strange character," he thought.

"Game three, Bernie Williams jacks a two-run shot in the bottom of the eighth."

"I'm good for a twenty on that."

"It's not a prediction."

"Right, because you're Nostradamus from Queens."

"It happened twenty years ago."

"You're weirding me out here, Queens."

"What's your name?"

"Frank Sullivan."

"Are you screwing with me?"

Frank chuckled at the craziness. "Are you serious?"

"My name is Raimy Elizabeth Sullivan. My father's name was Francis Joseph Sullivan."

A bolt of fear went through Frank. Was this someone from the gang? Had he blown his cover, and now they were threatening his family? "Who is this?"

In his shock, he left his cigar burning on the wooden top of the radio.

(The future radio, with no cover, revealed nothing to Raimy.)

Raimy shouted, "How dare you prank call me, you sick stalker? It's almost the 20th anniversary of his death!"

"Who is this really?' Frank repeated.

There was no answer. The radio shut off by itself.

* * *

A little careful nosing around the next day convinced Frank that his cover wasn't blown. He went back into his role, being extra cautious, worrying about the crazy woman who knew his daughter's name.

That night, he listened on the radio to the third game of the Series. Bernie Williams batted in two runners in the bottom of the eighth inning. Exactly as predicted.

* * *

**Author's note** : This chapter is inspired by an early pilot preview that had a major continuity error (the missing lid). This will be corrected by timeline changes in subsequent chapters.


	2. Chapter 2

Frank wondered, "Could I possibly have received a message from my grown daughter in the future? And if so, what about her other prediction, that it was almost the twentieth anniversary of my death?"

He gulped some coffee and tried to clear his head.

"Does that mean I'll die this year? Maybe, maybe not," he told himself. "But I should take precautions, write a message to her, just in case..."

He wrote a letter that night, describing what had happened the night before. At the end he added, "If you get a call on the ham radio in 2016 or so, someone talking about an old baseball game like it's just happening, please believe it's me so we get a chance to talk more. I love you. Dad."

But how could he get it to her? He couldn't deliver the envelope to eight-year-old Raimy. She would get curious, open it, and get scared.

He had to give it to someone who could keep it for her until she was older. Possibly Julie, but he would rather not deal with her right now, not with the secret of Maricella between them.

Then he thought of Gordo, Raimy's best friend. He was mature for his ten years; Frank believed he could be trusted.

On the morning of October 23, Frank met Gordo as he was heading out to school.

"Hey, Gordo."

"Hi, Mr. Sullivan. Long time no see. Where have you been?"

"Never mind that right now. I need to get a message to Raimy, not right away, but years from now. Can I trust you to keep it a secret?"

"Um, yeah, I guess so."

"Promise me."

"Okay, I promise."

Frank gave Gordo a sealed envelope. "Thank you, Gordo. This means a lot to me. If something happens to me in the next few days, please get it to Raimy in 2015 or early in 2016."

"I don't get it. Is this a joke?"

"No, but I can't explain right now. Just do it, please."

"All right, if you say so."

* * *

After school, Gordo let his curiosity get the better of him. He was a latchkey kid, the only child of a divorced mother with sole custody. His mom was still at work, so he steamed open the envelope and read the message.

"Cool, this is like Star Trek," Gordo thought. "I wonder if I could get a call from myself in the future. I'll make a note to remind myself to call."

Nobody was at home in the Sullivan house. Raimy's mom was at work at the hospital and Raimy was in an after-school program. Gordo knew how to get into the garage, because Raimy had once shown him a hidden key in a fake rock.

Gordo decided to try it. He turned on the ham radio and waited for a call to come in. Nothing happened.

Maybe it was all a joke, or Mr. Sullivan had gone crazy. Later Raimy told him, crying, that her father was a bad cop who got killed in a drug deal. Gordo decided not to show her the crazy letter., probably written on drugs. It would only make things worse for her.

Soon after that, Raimy asked Gordo to help her move the radio. The twinge of guilt he felt for playing with the radio without permission made him more careful with it. He didn't drop it, and the cover stayed unbroken and with the radio.

* * *

In 2016, lightning struck the antenna of the ham radio that Raimy's fiancee had set up in the garage for her birthday. Old burn marks on the cover of the device vanished. Due to a bizarre space-time anomaly, it had connected with itself twenty years in the past, becoming literally the same object in two different times.

Raimy thought she saw a glow from the tubes that attracted her into the garage, but this was actually a memory from the previous timeline. The glow was concealed by the lid this time.

"CQ, CQ, this is WQ2YV."

The conversation between Raimy and Frank began to diverge from the last time around. A subtle sense of deja-vu made Raimy more willing to communicate more details this time.

"My name is Raimy Elizabeth Sullivan. My father's name was Francis Joseph Sullivan. I live at 810 Browning in Bayside, Queens, where I have lived my whole life. My father Frank, after he left my mother..."

Frank cut in, "Who the hell is this? Tell me right now!"

"My father used to leave me birthday presents... in a coffee can."

Frank stared into space, trying to figure out what was happening. Someone was stalking him? To know about the coffee can, she must have been watching the house, spying on his daughter. He left his cigar burning on the top of the radio cover.

Raimy smelled smoke, and she looked at a fresh smoldering spot on the cover. She backed away from the radio. "You burned the box. Tell me you did not just burn the box!"

Frank was shocked. Not only was this woman stalking him and his family, she was watching him right that moment!

"Frank! Frank!" called Raimy, now more than half convinced that something supernatural was going on.

After smothering the burned spot, Frank looked wildly around, trying to see how someone was spying on him. He went back to the radio. "I want you to listen to me right now. If you come on this frequency again, if you contact me again, so help me God if you go near my family I will hunt you down and I will kill you. Do you copy that?"

"Frank!" called Ramy again, but the radio shut off from his side.

* * *

The next day, Frank had doubts. There was no way that someone could have gotten that close a look into the garage. There was no evidence of a stalker, or of a hidden camera. He began to wonder if it really was a call from the future. If the cover of the radio instantly transmitted burn marks, there was a way he could send a message to test this idea.

The mention of the coffee can told him Raimy (if it was Raimy) still remembered the secret message system, with a flag to indicate new contents. He buried a photo of himself holding a newspaper in the can, and burned the image of an American flag onto the cover.

* * *

**Author's note** : I am not following the pilot exactly, because I am correcting another huge continuity error.

In the pilot, the first call happens on October 21, and Raimy predicts a double homer for the third game of the World Series. Frank cannot confirm this prediction until the night of the 22nd. He makes another call, with the burn mark happening, that night, and hangs up on the call with a threat not to call again.

It isn't until the next day, after a coffee can test message, that Raimy calls back and tells him "You die tomorrow. October 23, 1996, game four of the Series." and Frank says, "Tomorrow night... tomorrow night where?"

Somehow the pilot added a whole extra day between October 22nd and October 23rd. I have compressed that out to restore a proper time-line.


	3. Chapter 3

When the ham radio (with an intact cover) was set up on Raimy's birthday, Gordo was troubled by a strange memory, of a note to Raimy from her father that he had never delivered.

That evening, after he got his daughter down for the night, Gordo's curiosity got the better of him. He walked over to Raimy's house; there was a light on in the garage. He overheard the bizarre conversation with Frank.

"This is real," Gordo thought. "OMG."

The next day, while Raimy was at work, Gordo decided to try something.

"I used the radio years ago... or did I? One way to find out."

He got into the garage at the time he remembered using the radio, and sat down in front of the device. It turned on by itself.

"Hello, anybody there?" asked his young voice.

"Gordo, this is me, " Gordo replied. "Grown-up Gordo."

"Dad?"

"No, I'm you, twenty years in the future. This radio does weird stuff, man."

"Wow! This is so cool. What can you tell me about my life?"

"I'd better not say too much. I might mess things up. Life is good, though."

"Okay."

"One important thing you have to know. Dad will die early next year, unless you save him."

"What? How?"

"He went out in freezing winter weather, to a swamp somewhere. I'm not sure why. He got cold and wet. He started getting sick and he didn't go to a doctor in time. He died of pneumonia."

"When was this?"

"He told a nurse as he was dying that he cursed the day of January the tenth."

"He doesn't live with us anymore. He left Mom for another woman and they got divorced."

"I know, but you still see him sometimes, right? He calls and visits."

"Yeah, he does. January's a couple months away. I can warn him in time."

* * *

Gordo Senior got the message.

Little Gordo was reluctant at first to tell him how he knew, but Big Gordo was a defense attorney. He soon had all the details from his son.

Big Gordo took it seriously, because he was planning something for that exact time. He had made a decision about who it was going to be, and the time and place was settled in his mind.

Julie Sullivan was on his eventual "to-do" list anyway, and in fact she was the main reason he had moved his family to the house next door. He hadn't settled on her to be at that place on the short-term list, however, until he happened to see her at the hospital the other day.

"I'll still do it, but I'll just dress warmer and and get treated early if I get sick," Gordo Senior thought.

He also thought about the radio that could send messages through time.

"I can use this," he thought. "I'll send myself messages, and I'll be able to stay one step ahead of any investigation."

He would turn on the radio once, soon. There would be no incoming messages yet, until he lived the twenty years into the future and could call himself back. So no more kills after the January kill. He knew, from the future call, that he would not be caught for that much. Then he would resume in the new time-line, protected by foreknowledge.

His motive was sadism, the sense of power that came from what he did. His choice of a Christian theme was deliberate, because he had picked out an abusive religious man to frame for the crimes. With his new advanced knowledge he could safely plant a victim's body in the deacon's house.

"It's all going to be easy now. I'll be able to carry on as the Nightingale Killer for years."


End file.
